The Ebionite Community holds a lot of criticism for
Christianity. But it is a mistake to believe that we hate Christians. We have Christian
friends, neighbors, colleagues, and family. And more importantly, our dissassociation with
Christian belief and practice does not indicate any negative thoughts about Yahshua
("Jesus") at all! We love Yahshua.

We do not see Yahshua as part of Christianity. Christianity is the religion of Paul.
Very little and often none of Yahshua seeps through enough to be noticeable. Our findings
lead us to the strong conviction that the faith of Yahshua ("Jesus") and
Christianity are worlds apart.

We become angry at Christians many times everyday, and work hard to overlook the things
they do, because we later realize that they too are working through life according to the
beliefs they have embraced. They are convinced that their beliefs honor Yahshua.

But we believe that Christianity dishonors not only Yahshua but YHWH, the Father. And
this is what is so hard to tolerate and even comprehend about Christians. To say that YHWH
wants a human sacrifice for sins is the most bizarre thing and so oblivious to Scripture
it is insulting. To say that YHWH died, as a sacrifice of Himself to Himself as a man
smacks of pagan mythology, not Scripture that Yahshua believed. It says there is one
deity, and no others. When Christianity boasts about "God" while putting aside
everything He said as "done away with" on the command of a man from Tarsus, how
can they be taken seriously or with respect? And when they "honor" Yahshua with
pagan holidays and services drawn from the practices that Scripture condemns, it is hard
to hold anything but anger. Then to hear Christians brush it all off because of
"grace" which is used as an excuse for whatever Christians please to do---this
is almost unbearably evil. We believe that Christianity like this is a horrible mockery of
everything Yahshua was and stood for. How could they hate him so much?

But this is mostly theology. When Christians act with human kindness and decency and
even (unconditional) love, they are wonderful people, and the theology is not involved. Of
course, the things just mentioned are not only Yahshua's teachings, but human decency.
But how many have those teachings ever been acted upon? That would be a big enough
job for any of us, and we should start (all of us) as soon as possible. How can
we look to a Reign of Heaven, if we can't take its rules and spirit seriously now? And one
of Yahshua's teachings is forgiveness. So we do not wish to harm or hate Christians,
fueling the cycle of hatred that never ends until it consumes all. But it is so hard to
forgive sometimes. Yet forgiveness doesn't mean we close our eyes to what has been done.We
must flee evil and keep sins from being repeated.

The picture above by the painter Marc Chagall is more than a picture worth a thousand
words. It represents the fact that many of Yahshua's own people have been murdered in his
name, Jews murdered in the name of a Jew. But Yahshua, according to Gospel accounts, said
"Father, forgive them, because they do not understand what they are doing." For
centuries Christians have ignored both what Yahshua said and taught while claiming to be
his followers. And so while Christians have hated and victimized Jews, his brethren, in
every way, they have done the same to Yahshua the Jew by misrepresenting and disobeying
him. Again and again, Yahshua must be saying, "Father, forgive them, because they do
not understand what they are doing." Christians have tormented not only to
"the least of his brethren" but Yahshua himself.

Christians spend millions of dollars to missionize Jews and infiltrate Judaism through
"Messianic Judaism" in a business-like enterprise. Christians console themselves
that the reason their efforts are wasted by pontificating on the "blindness of the
Jews." But it is Christianity that is "blind drunk" from it's Babylonian
cup. Christianity is responsible for its own failure to reach the people Yahshua came to
and the failure of Christianity to embrace Yahshua.

For Jews

Jesus
is a Jew who has done as much for Judaism as any other, but has been hated by many Jews.
Others have seen not Jesus---the invented god in whose name Christians murder us---but
Yahshua (Y'shua) the rabbi, the great man obscured and mocked by both Christians and Jews.

"Without doubt, it is that whereas none of the claims and aspirations of
Jesus can be said definitely to associate him with role of Messiah, not to speak of that
of the son of man. the strange creation of the modern myth-makers, everything
combines, when approached from the viewpoint of a study of the first-century AD Galilee,
or of charismatic Judaism, or of his titles and their development, to place him in the
venerable company of the Devout, the ancient Hassidim....

...The discovery of resemblances between the work and words of Jesus and those of
the Hassidim, Honi and Hanina ben Dosa, is however by no means intended to imply that he
was simply one of them and nothing more....it is nevertheless still possible to say...that
no objective and enlightened student of the Gospels can help but be struck by the
incomparable superiority of Jesus....

...The positive and constant testimony of the earliest Gospel tradition, considered
against its natural background of first-century Galilean charismatic religion, leads not a
Jesus as unrecognizable within the framework of Judaism as by the standard of his own
verifiable words and intentions, but to another figure: Jesus the just man, the zaddik,
Jesus the helper and healer, Jesus the teacher and leader, venerated by his intimates and
less committed admirers alike as prophet, lord, and son of God. (Geza Vermes. Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels.
London: Collins, 1973. Pp. 223-5.)

"'Jesus was not a Christian,' but he became a Christian. His teaching
and his history have been severed from Israel. To this day the Jews have never accepted
him, while his disciples and his foolowers of every generation have scoffed at and
persecuted the Jews and Judaism. But even so, we cannot imagine a work of any value
touching upon the history of the Jews in the time of the Second Temple which does not also
include the history of Jesus and an estimate of his teaching. What, therefore does Jesus
stand for in the eyes of the Jews at the present time?"

From the standpoint of general humanity he is, indeed, "a light to the
Gentiles." His disciples have raised the lighted torch of the Law of Israel (even
though that Law has been put forward in a mutilated and incomplete form) among the heathen
of the four quarters of the world.No Jew can, therefore, overlook the value of Jesus and
his teaching from the point of view of universal history. This a fact which neither
Maimondes nor Yehudah ha-Levi ignored."

"... in his ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness and originality
in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew ethical code; neither is there parallel to the
remarkable art of his parables. The shrewdness and sharpness of his proverbs and his
proverbs and his forceful epigrams serve, in an exceptional degree, to make ethical ideas
a popular possession. If ever the day should come and his ethical code be stripped of its
wrappings of miracles and mysticism, the Book of the Ethics of Jesus will be one of the
choicest treasures in the literature of Israel for all time."

More quotations from Jewish scholars and leaders on Yahshua as one of our own and his
contributions to our people and the world are forthcoming.

We fully believe that in
spite of men do, YHWH has the final say, and, perhaps, if you will, the last laugh. What
is the real purpose of the rebellious Christian religion as it slowly is harnessed back to
YHWH's loving plan for mankind? Read "Why Did YHWH Allow
Christianity?" This article is for both Christians and Jews and speaks of
how both are meant to be brought into Yahweh's Reign as one.